Providing medical care to patients on an outpatient basis customarily includes the delivery of medications. It may also involve delivering controlled items, such as syringes or orthopedic aids, for example, to individuals. While these things may be provided directly by the physician, they are more typically provided by issuing a prescription to the patient. The patient then takes the prescription to a pharmacist who provides the patient with the item described in the prescription. In connection with delivering those items to the patient, the pharmacist typically offers to provide counseling to the patient as to the expected use, side effects, or drug interactions.
In addition, outpatients may also need to obtain non-prescription items which are kept in the pharmacy. One example of such an item is a cough medication containing a small amount of narcotics which must be kept in the pharmacy, so that the sale of these items can be monitored.
In a traditional arrangement, a pharmacist is generally in charge of operating a single pharmacy, either alone or in concert with other pharmacists who are responsible to the lead pharmacist. Each pharmacy generally operates as a self-contained unit, with the pharmacist in each store responsible for maintaining patient records and for assembling medications or other items for those patients. As technology has advanced there have been improvements in the methods of preparing prescriptions, including automating counting, record keeping, and similar functions. In addition, with the advent of chain pharmacies, some previously isolated records may now be merged so that an individual store, which is part of a larger commonly owned or other related group of pharmacies, has access to patient records for patients who have purchased prescription medications or other items in any of the pharmacies that are a part of the group.
Pharmacies are also increasingly located within general merchandise stores. These general merchandise stores are often open during hours when traditional pharmacies are not open. Law, or industry practice, generally requires the presence of a pharmacist any time medications are being assembled or dispensed. In order to meet customer demand for pharmaceutical services during non-traditional hours, particularly in pharmacies incorporated in stores which are open extended hours, pharmacies have hired more pharmacists than would normally be required to run a single pharmacy. Because of this, in part, the need for trained pharmacists has increased, and there is currently a critical shortage of trained pharmacists.
In contrast, increased automation of services has decreased the time it takes to fill a single prescription. In addition, the number of prescriptions being filled has not increased as dramatically as the number of hours pharmaceutical services are commonly available. Because of this, the services of individual pharmacists may not be fully utilized, even in the face of a critical shortage of trained pharmacists.
In addition to the downtime created by the increased working hours of pharmacists, without a corresponding increase in workload, a second staffing problem exists. Smaller stores, particularly those in less urban areas, are unable to compete with their massive counterparts to attract the limited number of pharmacists currently being trained. Pharmacists who might otherwise be working in small independent pharmacies are choosing to work in larger pharmacies, which can generally afford to offer higher salaries and better benefits. Unable to attract pharmacists, some of these smaller stores may be forced to stop furnishing outpatient pharmaceutical care to outpatients. This may leave individuals in some areas without adequate access to outpatient pharmaceutical services.
Thus there exists a need for a system and method for furnishing outpatient pharmaceutical services in which a single pharmacist or other professional can serve multiple pharmacies, which may be either a collection of independent pharmacies or several branches of the same pharmacy. There further exists a need for a system and method for furnishing outpatient pharmaceutical services to outpatients which uses automation and innovative technology to permit each pharmacist or other professional to serve a larger client base. There further exists a need for systems and methods that provide automated delivery of pharmaceutical services to outpatients which will permit a smaller isolated pharmacy to continue to provide pharmaceutical services without being forced to compete with larger pharmaceutical groups for the exclusive services of one of the limited number of trained pharmacists.